1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to cutting apparatuses, particularly to a cutting apparatus with vibrator for cutting off a lens preform made by injection molding to form a number of lenses.
2. Description of related art
Nowadays, camera modules are combined with various portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers to be increasingly multi-functional. A lens module is a very important component of the camera module. Generally, the lens module includes a holder, a barrel, an image sensor, and a number of optical components such as optical lenses and filters received in the barrel. Plastic optical lenses are widely used in many lens modules as they can be easily manufactured using an injection molding process. Plastic optical lenses play an important role in reducing volumes of lens modules and decreasing numbers of the optical lenses used in lens modules.
During manufacturing the plastic optical lenses using the injection molding process, a number of the plastic optical lenses, e.g., four plastic optical lenses and eight plastic optical lenses, are injection molded. Theses injection molded plastic optical lenses is connected to a stub bar, thereby forming a lens preform. Typically, each of the plastic optical lenses is cut from the stub bar at a sprue position between the plastic optical lens and the stub bar using a blade, thereby forming a number of separated plastic optical lenses.
However, during using the typical blade to cut the plastic optical lenses from the stub bar, an amount of cutting plastic bits generate and attach onto the blade. As a result, the blade becomes blunt due to the attached cutting plastic bits. When the blunt blade continuingly cut the plastic optical lenses from the stub bar, fissures and burrs are formed on the plastic optical lens products. As the plastic optical lenses become even smaller and smaller, the fissures and burrs formed during the cutting process evidently affect quality of the plastic optical lens products, thereby further affecting quality of the lens module using the plastic optical lens products.
What is needed, therefore, is a cutting apparatus capable of preventing fissures and burrs occurring on the plastic lenses during the cutting process.